The long-term goal of the proposed project is to put into proper developmental prospective the emergence and incidence of childhood symptoms of behavior pathology, their response to vigorous therapeutic intervention or to no treatment at all, their relationship to the school related variables of intellectual, social and academic competence, and their relevance to precursor signs of serious adult psychopathology. More specifically, this project proposes to investigate the effectiveness of intensive day care therapeutic interventions for disturbed or vulnerable children against the background of an epidemiological study of childhood competence and behavior disorders for a large sample of children not in day care, as well as all children (n equals 300) receiving day care services within Champlain Valley. This area of Vermont is unique in that it contains the state's only truly urban area with the best socio-economic and urban-rural mixture of its population. At the same time, this area remains one of the most geographically isolated communities, with a relatively nonmobile population, that can be found in the north eastern United States. The methods used will be to identify four target groups of vulnerable children (i.e., children with schizophrenic parents, children with unsocialized aggressive behavior disorders, and children from severe environmental deprivations). Each target child will have two matched and two randomly selected control children half of whom are in a day care setting and half in a home care setting. The target children will receive intensive competence promoting day care experiences, the impact of which will be gauged by their acquisition and consolidation of social and intellectual skills versus those of their no treatment controls during their preschool and follow-up.